Teams from Egypt and the International Committee of the Red Cross have been granted permission to enter Gaza to search for the bodies of Israeli hostages taken during the October 7 attacks.
An Israeli government spokesperson confirmed that the teams had been allowed to cross beyond the “yellow line,” which marks the Israeli military’s pullback zone in the Gaza Strip.
The spokesperson said the team would use excavator machines and trucks for the search, as part of efforts to make sure the US-backed ceasefire agreement holds.
Up until now, Israel had not permitted the entry of such teams into Gaza.
Hamas has so far transferred 15 of the 28 deceased Israeli hostages under the first phase of the ceasefire deal, which requires the group to hand over all hostage bodies.
The remains of 13 deceased hostages remain in Gaza with Hamas citing obstacles to locating them in the pervasive rubble left by the fighting.
But Israel claims that Hamas, in fact, knows where the bodies are located.
“Israel is aware that Hamas knows where our deceased hostages are, in fact, located. If Hamas made more of an effort, they would be able to retrieve the remains of our hostages,” the Israeli government spokesperson said on Sunday.
Under the terms of the ceasefire deal, Israel agreed to return 15 Palestinian bodies for each Israeli hostage’s body handed over.
So far, Israel has repatriated the remains of 195 Palestinians, while Hamas has returned 15 bodies of Israeli hostages.
US President Donald Trump said he would be "watching very closely" to ensure Hamas returns more bodies.
"Some of the bodies are hard to reach, but others they can return now and, for some reason, they are not," he wrote on Truth Social.
“Let’s see what they do over the next 48 hours. I am watching this very closely,” he said in his post on Saturday.
Meanwhile, Israeli forces carried out a "targeted strike" on an individual in central Gaza who was planning to attack Israeli troops, Israel's military said on Saturday.
Israel said it had targeted a member of Islamic Jihad.
On Sunday, the Palestinian militant group said in a statement that the Israeli military's claim of a planned attack by the group was a "mere fallacious allegation".
It did not say whether one of its members was killed in the Israeli strike.
Witnesses said they had seen a drone strike a car and set it ablaze, while local medics said four people had been wounded, but there were no immediate reports of deaths.
